Public access through copper wire connection to the Internet has for many years been provided by means such as Cable Modems or modems on Digital Subscriber Lines. One or more subscribers on Cable Modems may share the bandwidth of a single physical link, and so the available bandwidth may be limited if there are multiple concurrent transfers. Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), on the other hand, provide a separate physical link per subscriber. Although DSL bandwidth was initially limited, emerging technologies, such as VDSL2, are able to provide up to 100 Mbit/second throughput per subscriber. Further, both of these access methods require a wired connection to a cable or telephony network which eventually connects to the Internet.
In a typical use scenario, at least one computing device may be coupled to a DSL modem providing access to the Internet for a subscriber through a standard telephone twisted copper wire pair. This copper-wire connection eventually couples to communication equipment, for example, a Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer (DSLAM), which may aggregate a plurality of such front-end connections for the transmission of the combined signals over media capable of higher communication volume (e.g., fiber optic cable), but occasionally over landlines or radio links. Internet Service Providers manage these connections, receive subscriber information from DSLAMS, and convey the received information to required destinations, such as other ISPs and DSLAMS, over the Internet backbone.
More recently, emerging wireless technology has been able to provide telephony voice and data transmission—typically using mobile cellular communication devices—over licensed radio bands without requiring a user to be physically tethered to the network over a cable connection. However, licensed bandwidth is somewhat limited. Building on this idea of using wireless communication media to remove the need for a wired connection to a network, radio connection devices based on unlicensed radio bands, known in some cases as wireless Access Points (AP), have been introduced between a hardwired modem and wirelessly-enabled computing equipment. A wireless Access Point, typically powered by wired power connection, may allow one or more wirelessly enabled computing devices within effective transmission range of the of the Access Point to access the Internet. One exemplary technology known in the industry is Wi-Fi, and the region within the radio range of the AP is known as a Wi-Fi Hotspot.
Some municipalities are installing, or are proposing to install, a network of overlapping Hotspots in order to provide “universal” access to the Internet for public use. This wireless access may be used for education, for law enforcement, or for other government service use. To date, the majority of these wide-area public hotspot networks have been provided with Internet access directly through fiber optic cable or wireless broadband backhaul, and the Access Point nodes have been powered by connecting to the power grid through street lights or building wiring and where power grid failure must be ameliorated by the use of local batteries. Such wide-area networks have proved expensive and difficult to install, the expense and difficulty coming at least from installing new fiber cable and from obtaining access to power.
What is therefore needed is a system for providing universal or overlapping wireless broadband access to users that is easy and cost-effective to install, as well as being manageable to support while providing adequate coverage and performance to meet user needs.